Interestingly, I never thought I'd do an adaptation. I've also been quite against them. I think trying to translate one medium to another is wrong. I never really felt that books fitted into film. Generally people are disappointed, aren't they?

My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something.

With a lot of films, people are sitting on the outside looking in, but I want the audience to get a bit more intimately involved with what's going on, so that they maybe can experience it a little bit more intensely.

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they've done.

I don't think you can question your instinct; you should always trust it.

Whenever I get fed up with life I love to go wandering in nature.

I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know.

I'm sure most of us remember being a kid and you have all of this endless time where two weeks before Christmas feels like ten years. I used to go to bed to try and go to sleep to try and make it go faster.

A lot of people have something to say about 'Wuthering Heights,' but nobody quite nails it.

As long as you keep your budgets small, there's a way of making films.

Dramatically, I like darkness, I like conflict - but I don't see the world as defined by them.

Every time I start a film I feel like I'm starting the first time, ever.

Films are all about decisions, and that's what I love.

For me, making films is about trying to work something out by myself in quite a lonely way. I find the whole thing very lonely really.

I always get quite close to my script because I work quite hard on them.

I am obsessed with why people turn out the way they are.

I can't remember why or how I started writing, but I think it was always a way of making sense of the world.

I deliberately never read about films before I see them.

I do believe some people can naturally act and don't know it.

I don't feel very revengeful in life at all.

I don't read reviews.

I don't think estates are grim places.

I don't want to think too much about me.

I hear filmmakers saying, 'I wanted to make to make a film about this issue, or this theme,' but I never start like that.

I just like doing things from my own head.

I love insects. They are amazing.

I never write with an actor in mind - never.